The regulation of political advertising has traditionally been a sensitive issue—unsurprisingly so, as it determines if and how political actors can pay to communicate with voters. Given the differences between national electoral systems and the lack of a consensus on the best regulatory approach, until recently neither the EU, the Council of Europe nor the European Court of Human Rights laid out strict standards. Following mounting concerns over the impact of opaque and manipulative targeted advertising in the 2016 US election and Brexit referendum, the EU’s proposal for a regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising breaks with this trend. This article analyses how the proposal is set to regulate political advertising, and evaluates how the proposed regulation fits into the EU’s competences to regulate democratic processes and affects existing national legal frameworks. The article concludes by assessing the new roles the EU and the Member States assume in political advertising regulation.

中文翻译：

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欧盟政治广告法的开始：通过内部市场统一民主愿景

传统上，政治广告的监管一直是一个敏感问题——毫不奇怪，因为它决定了政治行为者是否以及如何付费与选民交流。鉴于各国选举制度之间的差异以及对最佳监管方法缺乏共识，直到最近，欧盟、欧洲委员会和欧洲人权法院都没有制定严格的标准。在 2016 年美国大选和英国脱欧公投中，人们越来越担心不透明和具有操纵性的定向广告的影响，欧盟提出的关于政治广告透明度和定向的监管的提议打破了这一趋势。本文分析了该提案如何规范政治广告，并评估拟议法规如何适应欧盟监管民主进程的能力并影响现有的国家法律框架。本文最后评估了欧盟和成员国在政治广告监管中所承担的新角色。